Symmetry
by glitterburn
Summary: Hamam. Francesco reflects on the similarities - and differences - between Rome and Istanbul. Set after the events of the film.


**Symmetry**

The roof of the hamam was domed. Its vaults reached up, not to heaven, but certainly to above street-level. To the people of this neighbourhood, that was as good an idea of heaven as any.

Water dripped from the vault onto Francesco's skin. In contrast to the warmth of the steam and the heat of the stone beneath him, the droplets that fell from the ceiling were cold. He knew it was condensation. He had been up a makeshift scaffold to see the calcified drips that clung like stalactites to the curve of the vault. Yes, it was condensation, and yet it reminded him of rain, sudden and cold.

It reminded him that he was out of place, out of time. Just as a cold water-droplet has no place in the hot room of a Turkish bath, so he, a foreigner, had no place in Istanbul. Not really. Not when his life, his successes, lay in Rome.

There was a strange kind of symmetry to his life now: a balance, perhaps, with what had gone before. He found that events and sights returned to him with an increasing frequency. As he lay sprawled on the hot stone platform beneath the dome, gazing up at the circular skylights that punctured the heavy beige concrete, Francesco was reminded of two things, two events.

The first had taken place a few years ago. He could recall it vividly, as he always thought he would. He and Marta had just bought their apartment. It was modern and stylish, as were they. It sat atop an eighteenth century town house that they'd worked on together, and it overlooked all of Rome. In celebration, they had walked through the city, tracing a path through the ancient cobbled streets that separated their rooftop terrace from the vast dome of St Peter's.

The streets and alleys led them to the Pantheon, the old Roman temple that had since become a church. Francesco had been inside it many times, but now he found himself looking up at the huge unsupported dome with fresh eyes. The man who has recently gained himself a possession will often gaze more longingly, more critically, at those things he does not have, both to reassure himself of his own purchase, and to measure his success against his neighbours.

Marta had wandered past the squeeze of tourists to look at the names inscribed on the marble grave-markers. Francesco had stood in the middle of the floor and looked up, his head tilted back almost painfully as he stared straight out of the oculus at the grey-clouded sky above.

He remembered the ache in the back of his neck and the pull at the flesh of his throat as he strained to see beyond the clouds. The chatter of the tourists rang and echoed in distortion as it glanced off the honeycombed squares of the roof. The stream of light through the oculus dimmed as the clouds moved over the face of the sun. Only when the brightness of the glare through the clouds hurt his eyes did he look away.

In the centre of the Pantheon there is a drain, with a shallow channel around it that collects the rainwater that falls through the oculus. That day, the floor surrounding the drain had been damp. Despite the warmer weather, there were still cold drops of water falling from high above - from the lip of the oculus, and not from the sky. Rain inside a building, a contradiction that nevertheless he could see and hear and feel.

And taste. Yes, Francesco remembered the taste of that rain that was not rain. He had stood beneath the oculus and waited, heedless to any staring tourist and certainly heedless of Marta's comments. The rain that was not rain had tasted of limestone and the city, clear and tart at the same time.

It was not the same as the rain that fell from the roof of the hamam. The taste that now lay upon his tongue, when he could catch the cold droplets, was much softer. It tasted cloudy, the way a glass of raki looks when first it is mixed with water. It tasted of nostalgia, of old memories hazed by time into a jumbled pleasantness.

Francesco found that almost all of his memories of Istanbul were hazy, as if he'd lived here all his life. The days ran into one, golden-tinged by the sunlight. But he remembered with the same clarity of his memory of the Pantheon, the time when he'd first gone to the hamam with Mehmet.

He had asked a question – foolish and crass, now he thought about it – but he had felt forced into it, because the warmth of the steam and the closeness of Mehmet's flesh had threatened to make him less of a man. And so he had asked his question: "Is it true that Turkish women remove all their hair?"

Mehmet had given him an amused look, as if he knew what barriers Francesco was trying to raise between them. But he obligingly led Francesco to the roof, and together they removed the paving slab that blocked one of the skylights of the dome over the women's bath. There Francesco and Mehmet had sat together looking inwards and downwards at another world, a place of women.

Francesco had seen the truth for himself, but it was not that which caused his senses to stir. Instead it was the touch of Mehmet's hand on his shoulder, on the back of his neck. There had been something exciting about that touch – something possessive, but friendly. Something ambiguous that was for him to fathom, alone.

Alone. Loneliness. That was the thing that held Rome and Istanbul together for Francesco. In Rome he had felt alone despite his wife, his friends, his success. In Istanbul, although he was made welcome in Mehmet's bed, feted by Mehmet's family and friends, and was held in affection by the neighbourhood, there was still the feeling of being out of place, out of time.

His Aunt Anita had felt it, too. Her letters told the truth of it. Although she had turned her foreignness into an enticement, she was lonely for the land and family that had cast her off. How can an exile find happiness? _You can be happy in this life_, his aunt had written, long ago: _You must._

As Francesco thought this, he watched another droplet fall. It struck his knee with a dull sound, audible perhaps only to him. It felt like the tap of a finger, and only then did it register that the droplet was cold. Before he could smear it away into the dark hairs of his thigh, the heat of his skin warmed the droplet, and it trickled and spread of its own volition to become part of his sweat, part of his body.

Later, he tucked the red and white patterned cloth about his waist and climbed the stairs from the subterranean cloister of the bathhouse. From the roof of the hamam, Francesco could see the great blue dome of the Sultan Ahmet mosque. It was closer to him than ever St Peter's was. Behind it, he could see the grey mass of the Bosphorus as it rolled from the Black Sea out into the Mediterranean. The wind that came off the water was warm and salty. It smelled of age and decay. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine himself at Ostia, where the Tiber scatters Rome's waste to the sea.

Perhaps someday, Francesco thought, in some small patch of the Middle Sea, water from the Tiber will meet water from the Bosphorus, and the two will merge together to become one.

**end**


End file.
